Restaurant Review: Water Street Grille

This was quite possibly the most mediocre dinner I have ever had. Ever. For starters, when the waitress asked how everything was, we were actually honest and told her something was awful, because it really was. I've never, ever done that before.

I love food. I was excited to eat here, because I love tapas. It's a great way to discover new things. This place has a good variety of burgers, pizza and other entree items, as well as tapas. Maybe those items are better, but the five tapas items we tried ranged from mediocre at best to awful. 

Let's start with the awful: 
The Asian Chips and Salsa. The menu description: Spicy Tuna Tartar, Fried Wonton Chips and Sriracha Ice Cream. What we got was kettle style potato chips, about 6 small cubes of flavorless rare tuna, a large pile of watermelon cubes, seaweed salad and sriracha ice cream. I wasn't sure what to think about the ice cream, but I was intrigued. It was disappointing. You could tell there was sriracha in it, but it didn't really taste like anything. The tuna had NO flavor. The chips were regular potato chips. The seaweed salad was good though. Besides the lack of flavor in everything, the textures did not go well together at all and it was a hot mess. We spoke to the manager about it, and she just said it was new & edgy. It's not. It's a new restaurant trying too hard to be trendy and just missing the mark big time. 

Mediocre:
The jambalaya sliders. Problem #1: Lukewarm. Problem #2: There was a lot of bread, but really nothing else. A small piece of sausage, and the onions & peppers were chopped up pretty small in a little bit of sauce. Very bland.

Steamed Shrimp with Tequila Lime Butter: Nothing special. Not worth $12 for 9 small shrimp. The butter was okay, but didn't really have anything special about it. 

 The Good:
Avocado Fries: Graham didn't care for these, I liked them. I don't know if I would order them again, but they were pretty good. They weren't overly crispy, so the soft texture of the avocado was able to shine through. 

The Goat Cheese Hummus: This would have been great if the dippers had been warm or hot. The description: Served with Fresh Brick Oven Roasted Veggies, Grilled Flat Bread. The roasted vegetables (just carrots) were cold. The rest of the vegetables were tomato wedges, zucchini sticks, radishes. The flatbread would have been better if it were warm. 

There were  few good things about this visit: 
-The server was very good. When she asked about our tuna, and we told her we didn't care for it, she wanted to get a manager. We told her that was unnecessary, but she said that since they were a pretty new restaurant, all of the feedback they could get would help. They also took that item off of our check. 
-The view was beautiful. We ate on the patio, so we had a waterfront view. 
-Free parking in the deck across the street. 
-20 beers on tap. 

We'll probably go back and give their entree menu items a chance before we write this place off for good, but on this visit I was not impressed at all. The food was very blah and had little to no flavor. Even the cocktail I ordered was watered down.